Biography
Taylor (Alison) Swift was born December 13 1989 in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. While at school, Taylor took a big interest in poetry and won a national poetry contest with a three page long poem called ‘Monster in my closet’. At just 10 years of age, Taylor started song writing and singing publically at Festivals and fairs around her town. Along with singing, Taylor was also in a kid’s sketch comedy group though choose to follow her singing within the country music scene and had a regular appearance at the local mall singing with backing karaoke tracks.
At just 11, Taylor got rejections from record labels, but never gave up her talent and was asked to perform her rendition of the American national anthem at the U.S. Open tennis tournament. Taylor continued to write songs more seriously at 12 and started to play a 12-string Guitar and at 14, her family moved to a Nashville suburb. Taylor turned 15 years old and got rejected a deal by RCA records as she wasn’t allowed to record her own music and songs, until appearing at The Bluebird Café where she got the attention of a Mr.Scott Borchetta who promptly signed her to his label, Big Machine Records.
Taylor claims her biggest musical influences are Shania Twain, LeAnn Rimes, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton and her grandmother, who was actually an opera singer.
In 2006, Taylor’s (soon to be) big song hit the world titled ‘Tim McGraw’ and in 2007 it hit number 6 in the Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and later went on to much bigger success. Her self titled album ‘Taylor Swift’ was released in Autumn 2006 which she wrote or co-wrote the whole album which later peaked at number one at Billboard Top Country Albums selling millions of copies. Her singles released from the album over the next two years also brought huge success, along with winning various awards for her music work including being nominated a Grammy in 2008.
2008 turned into a big year for Taylor, along with huge success in music, she also turned her hand to acting appearing in various MTV productions and later a collabopration with the Jonas Brothers in their 3D Concert Film, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience.
A new album also was released titled ‘Fearless’ in Autumn of 2008 and this sparked even more success, topping the Billboard 200 Album Chart. The first single from the album titled ‘Love Story’ became a hit on both the country and pop charts and in 2009 the song bacame the most paid downloaded country song in history. Taylor was the biggest selling artist of 2008 in America for both albums, which finished at number three and number six respectively in the album chart. She also became ranked in the Top 10 for the most MySpace visits for all genres of music, and is MySpace’s current top-ranking Country artist passing over 200 million music streams on the myspace site.
Taylor swift appears on various cover magazines such as Blender, Cosmogirl, Rolling Stone and many others, as well as having her own celebrity doll released. She also does a huge amount of charity work and donates items and cash to help causes. Also, using her success, this gives her opportunity to get messages accross that benefit others such as launching a campaign to protect children from online predators.
During 2009, Taylor Swift announced the Fearless tour which sees her tour all over America, Canada and other venues. Supporting acts were Kellie Pickler and Gloriana and Taylor also worked on the visuals and graphics for the tour.